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Jerome Motto who is for a suicide barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge at his home in San Mateo. He is holding the newspaper stories and studies he has collected about the barrier for the last 30 years. John Storey San Mateo Event on 9/15/05

The first time Jerome Motto set foot inside the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District headquarters to speak in favor of a suicide barrier, he was 42 years old.

It was February 1964. He was a psychiatrist at UCSF who instructed the third-year medical class and oversaw psychiatric residents at San Francisco General Hospital. The focus of his academic research was suicide, a subject rarely addressed in medical journals.

Back then, San Francisco led the nation in suicides. Nobody knew why. Motto had studied 200 suicides and found that many family doctors had missed signs that patients intended to kill themselves. Those who committed suicide had often complained of imaginary pains, leading doctors to believe that the anticipation or fear of pain might be harder to bear than the pain itself.

When Motto's suicidal patients would ask, "What am I here for, anyway?" he didn't have a ready answer. Motto came to believe that suicide wasn't just a psychiatric problem; it was a public health problem, a psychological problem, a sociological problem, a philosophical problem and a theological problem.

In 1964, Motto allied himself with San Francisco's Suicide Prevention Center, and was invited by its members to argue their case before the bridge district's security committee. By that time, three initiatives for a barrier had come before the board and been rejected.

Motto assumed that the directors would listen to the mental health community, and then act accordingly. He could not imagine he would be speaking before the board in the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s and again in 2005.

"If people started hanging themselves from the tree in my front yard, I'd have a moral obligation to prevent that from happening," Motto said in an interview at his home. "I'd take the limb off, put a fence around it. It's not about whether the suicide statistics would change, or the cost, or whether the tree would be as beautiful.

"If an instrument that's being used to bring about tragic deaths is under your control, you are morally compelled to prevent its misuse. A suicide barrier is a moral imperative."

Spread before him on a table during the interview were files dating back decades: bridge district meeting agendas, psychiatric reports and even a 1971 letter from Dr. Jean-Pierre Soubrier of the medical faculty of the University of Paris, attesting to the decrease in suicides from the Eiffel Tower after a barrier was completed in 1967.

Motto has heard dozens of arguments against a barrier. "The attitude is, 'I don't care enough about anyone else's life to do anything about it,' " he said, shaking his now-balding head in disbelief.

But for Motto, the matter is simple: "A barrier would say, 'Society is speaking, and we care about your life.' "

Friday

The Engineering Challenge: A suicide barrier must be calibrated with meticulous care.

Saturday -- Saving a Life: The assumption that suicide is unpreventable is wrong.